Canada's Internet Pharmacies Thriving On Business From U.S.

[Murray Charters <mcharters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Canada's Internet Pharmacies Thriving On Business From U.S.
Low costs of prescriptions attract seniors, criticism
By Cyril T. Zaneski
Sun Staff
Originally published December 21, 2003

WINNIPEG, Manitoba - Encased by iron bars and hidden behind frosted windows of 
what looks like an abandoned storefront,
one of Canada's most successful Internet pharmacies is quietly thriving on a 
street known for a different kind of drug
traffic.

Like a speakeasy from the U.S. Prohibition era, the company, CanadaMeds.com, 
ushers employees and visitors into the
building through a secret, guarded side entrance.

"We don't want the neighbors to get any ideas about what's behind these walls," 
chief executive Mike Hicks said.

But tens of thousands of American seniors have found the company, sometimes 
with help from their Web-savvy
grandchildren and children. Every day, they send about 1,000 prescriptions by 
fax and phone to this storefront, which -
along with more than 175 other Internet pharmacies in Canada - is booming 
beyond their owners' wildest expectations.

Enticed by bargain prices for prescription drugs across the border, the 
budget-conscious seniors are defying a U.S.
Food and Drug Administration ban on importing prescription drugs. They are 
expected to spend about $900 million this
year on drugs from Canada.

The grass-roots rebellion has spread to statehouses and city halls, which face 
their own cash crunch meeting double-
digit increases in prescription drug costs as tax revenues plunge.

Governors of at least 13 states and elected officials in dozens of 
jurisdictions - including Boston; Burlington, Vt.;
and Montgomery County, Md. - are drawing up plans to help employees and 
retirees import drugs. Springfield, Mass., has
already begun direct imports from Canada for its employees, saying it expects 
to cut its annual $18 million drug bill
in half.

Montgomery County, whose County Council expects to take up the import issue 
next month, could shave $8 million to $30
million off its annual $68 million drug bill by buying north of the border for 
its 40,000 employees, according to the
plan's sponsor, Councilman Tom Perez.

Unconvinced by FDA claims that Internet purchases from Canada might be allowing 
unsafe counterfeit drugs into the U.S.
market, Perez said: "The real safety issue is the suffering of Americans who 
need drugs and can't afford them."

With the tide of prescription drug imports rising, the politically powerful 
pharmaceutical industry lobbied heavily to
defeat measures in Congress this year that would have legalized the 
cross-border drug trade; it has moved recently to
restrict drug supplies in Canada.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, has turned up the volume on warning 
consumers that buying imported drugs is illegal
and could open the gate for a flood of counterfeit medicines funneled through 
Canada.

Seeds for the Internet pharmacy business were planted in this prairie province 
in late 2000, when a young pharmacist
made a bundle selling Nicorette gum at half the U.S. price on eBay.

Today, Manitoba - whose barrel-chested economy is built on a foundation of 
manufacturing, farming, mining and forestry -
 is gaining a reputation for cultivating Internet pharmacy companies as well as 
wheat crops. The industry is fertilized
by affordable real estate, low wages and a supportive provincial government.

Change without notice

"There are 65 of these pharmacies here that I know of, but that number may have 
already changed since this morning,"
said Ron Guse, registrar of the Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association, which 
regulates provincial pharmacies. "It's a
phenomenally lucrative business, and it is growing all across Canada."

The new pharmacies are gobbling up corners of suburban office parks and 
building shiny new offices in tiny farm towns.
Others, like CanadaMeds, have expanded into several vacant storefronts, 
including that of a traditional drugstore that
moved across the street.

The nation's largest Internet pharmacy, Mediplan Health, which sprouted in 
March 2001 from the Nicorette gum sales,
claims 140,000 U.S. customers that it serves from a former farm machine shop 
more than two hours west of Winnipeg.

Girding for continued growth, Mediplan, which does business on three Web sites 
as RxNorth.com, CanadianDrugstore.com
and Mediplanhealth.com, opened a gleaming 18,000-square-foot office across from 
a chicken farm a half-hour south of
Winnipeg, in Niverville.

The new plant, which employs 12 people now, is expected to have 200 at work by 
early next year, said Suzy Funk,
Mediplan's assistant director of operations.

"We expect we're going to be doing 2,000 prescriptions a day here by the end of 
January," Funk said.

The Internet pharmacies' expectation for continued growth comes despite 
President Bush's signing this month of landmark
legislation that will add a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program 
in 2006 to help 40 million elderly and
disabled Americans.

Seeking larger share

But few here expect the Medicare overhaul to provide more than a Band-Aid for 
seniors who rely on its drug benefit. So
Internet pharmacies are making a bid to get a larger share of the estimated 
$192 billion that Americans spend each year
on prescription drugs.

The companies are trying to establish independent accreditation to assure 
American consumers of the safety of the
Canadian pharmacies and helping states and municipalities set up Web sites to 
help government employees buy imported
drugs.

"The only thing that will end the Internet pharmacy industry in Canada is if 
U.S. pharmacy prices come into line," said
David MacKay, executive director of the Canadian International Pharmacy 
Association, which represents about 25 Internet
drugstores. "But how long is it going to take before Congress decides to 
leverage its purchasing power, put price
pressure into place or impose price controls as this country does?

"Right now, it's the pharmaceutical industry leveraging U.S. drug prices."

Most U.S. analysts believe that the Medicare drug benefit in the short run will 
drive drug prices even higher.

Just keeping up

Tim McBride, a health care expert at Washington University in St. Louis, for 
one, said the benefit to seniors will
quickly be outstripped by drug costs.

"With drug costs already rising between 10 and 15 percent a year, seniors may 
not see any net savings at all, really,"
he said.

The average senior spends $2,322 a year for prescription drugs - $999 of that 
is out of pocket, with the rest covered
by retiree health coverage, government programs, charity or private insurance, 
according to the nonpartisan Kaiser
Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

About 5 percent of seniors spend $4,000 a year or more for drugs, the 
commission says, and 47 percent of those have no
health care.

For seniors with heavy drug expenses, Canadian pharmacies are a godsend - drugs 
there are sold at roughly half of U.S.
prices. Reasons for the price gap between the two countries are complicated by 
many factors - from differences in
currency values to the propensity of Americans to file lawsuits in medical 
matters.

But there is one clear, simple difference: Canada controls drug prices; the 
United States does not.

The job of Canada's Patented Medicine Prices Review Board is to guarantee that 
prices charged by pharmaceutical
manufacturers for a patented drug are "not excessive" compared with prices of 
comparable medicines. If the board finds
a drug is too expensive, it is empowered to order a company to cut the price.

Average annual increases of patented drug prices in Canada have fallen 
substantially since the board was started in
1987 and have been far below those in the United States.

Whether to follow the lead of Canada was a major focus of the congressional 
fight over the Medicare bill. The
Republican majority prevailed in the debate, arguing that price regulations 
would stifle research and development of
new drugs.

Drug companies spent 9.9 percent of their Canadian sales on R&D last year, the 
price review board reported. That's
little more than half the 18 percent that companies spent on research in the 
United States, according to the drug
industry's trade group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, 
or PhRMA.

Price controls would stifle research efforts that could develop drugs to 
protect aging baby boomers from Parkinson's,
Alzheimer's and other diseases, said John Calfee, health care analyst at the 
American Enterprise Institute. "The drugs
we will need are more important than the ones we already have," Calfee said.

Maryland Health Secretary Nelson J. Sabatini agrees with Calfee. The issue 
should not be drug price controls for the
United States, he said, but rather getting other nations to share research 
costs: "We're paying for R&D for the rest of
the world, and that's not fair."

Maryland has so far not chosen to join other states that are considering 
Canadian import programs. Facing rising drug
costs and declining tax revenues, the governors of Minnesota, Illinois, New 
Hampshire, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin,
among others, are leading a movement toward establishing such programs.

Supply and demand

Sabatini does not think such programs make sense. "If everybody starts doing 
that, there aren't going to be enough
drugs for the Canadians," he said.

Drug importation is not a new issue in border states. Seniors in Minnesota and 
North Dakota have been driving to
pharmacies in Canada for more than 20 years, said Peter Wyckoff, executive 
director of the Minnesota Senior Federation.
People seeking discounts have swelled the federation's membership by one-third 
this year - to 29,000.

"Every one of those people is in need of affordable drugs," Wyckoff said. "So 
we make them honorary Minnesotans."

Enforcing an extremely unpopular U.S. ban on imports has fallen to the FDA. 
"We've got very clear and strict statutory
mandates to regulate these products," said William Hubbard, the agency's 
associate commissioner for planning. "It's
just very difficult for us."

Hubbard is a master of understatement. The agency is stuck in a very sour 
political pickle.

The agency has looked the other way to avoid busting seniors who import 
medicines for their personal use. And it has
avoided wagging fingers at governors such as Democrat Rod R. Blagojevich of 
Illinois and Republican Tim Pawlenty of
Minnesota, who openly challenged the FDA to stop them from launching import 
programs.

Instead, the agency has focused on issuing grim warnings that Internet shoppers 
can't be assured that the imported
drugs were not manufactured by a counterfeiter in Pakistan or Bulgaria.

Out of reach

Even the FDA's investigations of Canadian drug exporters have been hamstrung. 
Just one of 58 investigations the agency
launched in the past four years of Internet drugstores has focused on a 
Canadian company, CanaRx Services Inc., the
Ontario-based company that acts as middleman between Canadian pharmacies and 
the Springfield, Mass., prescription drug
program. That investigation is continuing, Hubbard said. "The foreign sites we 
can't reach as easily," he added.

The FDA hopes it can squeeze the Canadian pharmacies by enlisting parcel 
carriers and credit card companies, Hubbard
said. It's not clear, though, what the FDA can do to persuade the companies to 
cooperate. Credit card companies,
particularly, are concerned that their cooperation would raise customers' 
privacy concerns, he said.

While the FDA has struggled, Congress has slapped the agency around from both 
directions. Last summer, the House voted
narrowly to legalize Canadian drug importation, but the measure failed in the 
Senate and was not included in the final
Medicare bill. PhRMA spent $85 million lobbying against legislation to legalize 
Canadian drug importation, said Sen.
John McCain, an Arizona Republican who co-sponsored the failed Senate measure.

"I've literally had meetings on Capitol Hill where I'd had a member of Congress 
chew me out in the morning for not
letting this stuff in, and then in the afternoon had somebody else chew me out 
for letting it in," Hubbard said. "The
final question is this, do you want to provide access to those cheaper drugs 
and accept the risk?"

Wyckoff and other advocates of drug importation say the FDA has framed the 
issue incorrectly. "The issue is not the
safety of drugs from Canada," he said. "The issue is drug costs in the United 
States."

SOURCE:  The Baltimore Sun


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